Lexington:The curious strcngth of the NRA

摘要

By many measures, America's pro-gun lobby is in bad shape. After a spate of shootings, notably last December's murder of 20 children and six staff at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, its spokesmen sound shrilly out of step with majority opinion, and even with each other. Yet the gun lobby is poised for a big win. Newtown left America winded by grief, with its tales of six-and seven-year-olds shot by a disturbed young man using his mother's guns, among them a semi-automatic assault rifle. In January Barack Obama asked Congress for ambitious gun controls, including the renewal of a ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004 and universal background checks on gun buyers, closing a wide loophole that allows private sales without verifying the criminal or mental-health histories of buyers.